This is another example of what I mean about what the abortion fight is REALLY about. It's not about saving babies, it's about punishing sluts. Easy access to contraception is demonstrably the best way to prevent abortions, but that is not the real goal of the conservative movement. The real goal of the conservative movement is to stop premarital sex, by punishing women who engage in it.

Obama is requiring churches to cover contraceptives in their health plans. If conservatives really wanted to stop abortions, they would be cheering this move. The fact that it's a controversy is the clearest possible proof that what I've been trying to say is true -- that the fight is so nasty and ongoing because conservatives do not want what they claim to want.

They don't give a f*ck about the fetuses, what they care about is the women. They want to stop access to contraceptives so that those sinful sluts will be punished with pregnancy as God intended.

Oh, and it's okay to lie about birth control in order to get those bitches.

Why does all gender discussion seem to come from a zero-sum perspective!? Just because I gain doesn't mean you lose.

These are the types of guys (I hesitate to say "men") that are incredibly intimidated by women who make more than they do. If I make $100K, and my wife makes $150K, she doesn't make more than I do. WE make a sh*tload of money. We pool our money, and don't do any of that proportional bill paying crap (e.g. "You make more than me, so I'll pay 40% of the bills, and you pay 60%").

i can understand what's motivating Suzanne Venker here. I think it's natural for people to believe in a one size fits all mechanic for our species, especially when it comes to things like happiness. A traditional female role probably makes Venker happy (no harm there) -- although maybe someone should point out to her that as a successful author, she has nowhere near what I would consider a traditional female role. Her work also puts her in contact with large amounts of people of both sexes professing unhappiness with the state of relationships.

The natural human instinct from which Venker is presumably operating -- the altruistic desire to share one's method of happiness with unhappy people -- becomes dangerous/stupid/offensive when taken from a personal level to a general level. She is no more insightful than the man who enjoys self flagellation as a means of self fulfillment, and I give her the exact same amount of respect as I would the guy who told me that a cat-o-nine-tails was the secret to happiness.

i can understand what's motivating Suzanne Venker here. I think it's natural for people to believe in a one size fits all mechanic for our species, especially when it comes to things like happiness. A traditional female role probably makes Venker happy (no harm there) -- although maybe someone should point out to her that as a successful author, she has nowhere near what I would consider a traditional female role. Her work also puts her in contact with large amounts of people of both sexes professing unhappiness with the state of relationships.

The natural human instinct from which Venker is presumably operating -- the altruistic desire to share one's method of happiness with unhappy people -- becomes dangerous/stupid/offensive when taken from a personal level to a general level. She is no more insightful than the man who enjoys self flagellation as a means of self fulfillment, and I give her the exact same amount of respect as I would the guy who told me that a cat-o-nine-tails was the secret to happiness.

Also... people love to complain more than they like to talk about what went right. Yeah, you can hear all about what men hate when they're in relationships. They will tell you, I don't like that she does this, I don't like that she does that. I used to do it. Hell, I was well known on these boards for my misadventures with women. Hearing what people hate does not necessarily tell you what they want, nor do people really know what they want when it comes to something as mysterious and baffling as the attraction between two people that creates a lasting marriage.

That being the other caveat here. How many of those guys who said they want this woman... went on to a long lasting relationship with exactly that type of woman?

I can tell you, if you look around, there are plenty of women looking for that secondary position who want to stay home and be taken care of by men after they take care of the house. eHarmony is full of them (of the matches that eventually led to my now-wife, about 66.6% had their profession listed as housewife or stay-at-home mom; question being how can you be a housewife when you're not someone's wife is up for grabs). I got no issue with those women, just not the kind of lady I wanted to marry. But, I've also known plenty of guys who wanted that, tried it, and then felt suffocated and felt that she needed to get out and do something in the real world too or just ran away with a divorce to go back to being single and having no attachments.

Without some qualifying evidence that these men had and enjoyed long-term (talking long-term marriage) relationships with these women who are "disappearing", what these men say that want means diddlysquat. Just like it would for any lady saying she's looking for X type of man.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
PSN: DemosthenesHPW

I am not sure if that amounts to a war. New Jersey's sexual assault statute, that comes damn close.

At the fringes of that article is something I have often wondered about. As our American culture moved to a 2 job, 2 income system, domesticity is more democratic. But for the decline of the stay at home mom, there was not a parallel rise in the stay at home dad. This is far from feminist and just pure economics. 2 Incomes became necessary. But where are the stay at home dads for the career women? Are the career women adopting or going for IVF, or single motherhood? Are there any dads here who would not leap at the chance to be the stay at home parent for their kids, particularly the young ones, in lieu of day care half the day?

In any social, economic system you would expect to see a measurable rise in dads becoming the at home parent.

Oh, plus God will smite us dead, but obviously the laundry is far more important.

In some ways, this IS a zero-sum game, and men do have to lose some for women to gain.

And I really do wonder, sometimes, how much of the argument is 'God will smite us!' and how much is laundry. Seems to me it would be awful easy to thunder about God's wrath, as a sublimation for your own at being forced to do chores.

Oh, I should also say that, if you're a woman who's reading this, and you like those social patterns, by all means, go for it. If you don't think of it as subservience or whatever, or you think I'm being deliberately inflammatory (which I am), and you want to live your life that way, it doesn't bother me any.

Just don't expect to use the government to force other people to live that same way; you're free to persuade other people that your chosen lifestyle is superior (and maybe it is, for all my nasty snarking), you're just not free to legislate that they're required to. And you shouldn't be allowed to dress up punishing sluts as 'protecting babies', when it is demonstrably nothing of the sort.

It seems like everyone, conservative and liberal alike, wants to use the government to force people to all live the same way, to impose universal behavior standards, and most of the time, that's just not a very good idea. We are an incredibly large country with an incredibly diverse population, and the only way to hold together such a disparate group of people into a more powerful and more efficient whole is to let as many people as possible arrange their lives how they see fit.

My constant arguments about civil liberties aren't just important from an individual standpoint (preventing crimes against single people), but also from a societal one.... the looser the grip, the easier it is to hold together a divergent population as a unified whole.

America is supposed to have room for the Amish, and the gays, and this lady, and Gloria Steinem, all at once. Working out the contradictions in that is the hard part. In general, erring on the side of tolerance and freedom seems the best idea.

I think maturity is in such short supply more than anything for all genders and sexes. I am closing in on 30 and the number of spoiled, self entitled, ignorant twat bombs who come together, have no damn clue what a healthy relationship dynamic is, and then get married shocks me. If any of these last longer than 10 years I will be shocked beyond belief and confined to an institution for 6 months as I prepare for the coming horsemen.

If you really think who cooks, who does the dishes, who does the laundry effects who you are as a man or woman, get the f*cking pacifier out of your mouth. That is for girls, or that is dumb boy stuff should have ended when you were 10. It is not beneath a woman to take out the garbage, mow the lawn. You are not giving in to some Mad Men fantasy by wearing a dress or making your boyfriend a drink after a tough day. You aren't pussy whipped if you stop at the store on the way home from work for milk. It is not emasculating for a man to do the cooking, or clean the bathroom.

If you two are not 1 unit, 1 team BEFORE you get married, learn fast. There are no men or women in a proper marriage, in a proper committed relationship. It is just you two. Talk, be compassionate, worth together. Or don't. But for Christ's sake if this basic lesson has not been learned, use condoms. But if you are a man or a woman who found that magical person who puts up with your immature bullsh*t, cling to them. You cannot do better, because everyone else is getting older and learning this lesson that you seem to have left behind.

I am not sure if that amounts to a war. New Jersey's sexual assault statute, that comes damn close.

At the fringes of that article is something I have often wondered about. As our American culture moved to a 2 job, 2 income system, domesticity is more democratic. But for the decline of the stay at home mom, there was not a parallel rise in the stay at home dad. This is far from feminist and just pure economics. 2 Incomes became necessary. But where are the stay at home dads for the career women? Are the career women adopting or going for IVF, or single motherhood? Are there any dads here who would not leap at the chance to be the stay at home parent for their kids, particularly the young ones, in lieu of day care half the day?

In any social, economic system you would expect to see a measurable rise in dads becoming the at home parent.

I suspect that the stay-at-home anything was a relatively brief period in human history. Not to go all Hillary Clinton here, but I suspect that up until the post-war period, children were largely raised by mothers AND grandparents AND aunts AND other children AND neighbors. In other words, it takes a, uh, community. I don't know where that goes in the near future, but economics dictate that it's not just going to be a single, harried parent for most of us. Well, most of you. Me and my girl are going full on DINK on this hizzie.

This clueless attitude to marriage does come screeching to a halt at the border of 30, trust me. My wife and I are hurtling towards 40 and still have to offer cups of tea and shoulders to cry on for friends who are tangled in the wreckage of incredibly poorly thought out relationships.

The whole "the family is a unit, not a competing man and woman" thing is reason one why we're moving to Sweden. Parental leave doesn't care if you're the mother or the father; Childcare is effectively free; and the gender pay gap is one of the world's smallest.

Gravey wrote:

Reading Maq's post as anything but dry humour probably means you just need another cup of coffee.

I suspect that the stay-at-home anything was a relatively brief period in human history. Not to go all Hillary Clinton here, but I suspect that up until the post-war period, children were largely raised by mothers AND grandparents AND aunts AND other children AND neighbors. In other words, it takes a, uh, community. I don't know where that goes in the near future, but economics dictate that it's not just going to be a single, harried parent for most of us. Well, most of you. Me and my girl are going full on DINK on this hizzie.

Not only that, but in the days before convenience appliances and food that's easy to buy and make, you needed someone "staying at home" because it was a full time job. Laundry didn't mean throwing things in the washing machine, it meant scrubbing them with a washboard. Not to mention that before the 50s, the majority of people lived and worked on farms, and you'd better believe the woman had a job there. Both women and men worked at farm chores all day long.

I suspect that the stay-at-home anything was a relatively brief period in human history. Not to go all Hillary Clinton here, but I suspect that up until the post-war period, children were largely raised by mothers AND grandparents AND aunts AND other children AND neighbors. In other words, it takes a, uh, community. I don't know where that goes in the near future, but economics dictate that it's not just going to be a single, harried parent for most of us. Well, most of you. Me and my girl are going full on DINK on this hizzie.

Not only that, but in the days before convenience appliances and food that's easy to buy and make, you needed someone "staying at home" because it was a full time job. Laundry didn't mean throwing things in the washing machine, it meant scrubbing them with a washboard. Not to mention that before the 50s, the majority of people lived and worked on farms, and you'd better believe the woman had a job there. Both women and men worked at farm chores all day long.

Laundry is just one of the many things that made "homemaking" a full-time job, although it is probably the one that has changed the most in the past thousand years. From constantly mending and resizing clothes for a growing family, preparing and cooking meals, and just making sure the fire was always going during winter there was more than enough for people to do around the house.

I suspect that the stay-at-home anything was a relatively brief period in human history. Not to go all Hillary Clinton here, but I suspect that up until the post-war period, children were largely raised by mothers AND grandparents AND aunts AND other children AND neighbors. In other words, it takes a, uh, community. I don't know where that goes in the near future, but economics dictate that it's not just going to be a single, harried parent for most of us. Well, most of you. Me and my girl are going full on DINK on this hizzie.

Not only that, but in the days before convenience appliances and food that's easy to buy and make, you needed someone "staying at home" because it was a full time job. Laundry didn't mean throwing things in the washing machine, it meant scrubbing them with a washboard. Not to mention that before the 50s, the majority of people lived and worked on farms, and you'd better believe the woman had a job there. Both women and men worked at farm chores all day long.

Laundry is just one of the many things that made "homemaking" a full-time job, although it is probably the one that has changed the most in the past thousand years. From constantly mending and resizing clothes for a growing family, preparing and cooking meals, and just making sure the fire was always going during winter there was more than enough for people to do around the house.

Let my contributions to this be how both the piecework of cottage industries and every cleaning lady/maid/etc. are written out of history in these "50s TV was actually a documentary" versions of the past.

Not the comic. But the point has been made many times the past 4 years. And all of that America hating class warfare was when a Republican was in office. John Stewart and Colbert took the pundits to task on their fake 50's and 60's.

I say if Obama were to say that America needs to return to the principles of Eisenhower and Roosevelt, we would see the true face of what the Republican Party has become. Title the Tax Bill the Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt tax solution, and see what happens.

Tanglebones is awesome. An amusing version of this is also done at the end of the movie the Other Guys where they show the differences in wealth in America between the average workers and CEOs, tax brackets, etc... Really interesting bit after a great movie.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
PSN: DemosthenesHPW

Tanglebones is awesome. An amusing version of this is also done at the end of the movie the Other Guys where they show the differences in wealth in America between the average workers and CEOs, tax brackets, etc... Really interesting bit after a great movie.

I think they pulled it off Instant Queue before I had a chance to watch it. Very sad.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Let them eat gay wedding cake.

Reaper81 wrote:

I am half-gay on my mother's side but I ethnically self-identify as "closeted lumber mill worker."

Tanglebones is awesome. An amusing version of this is also done at the end of the movie the Other Guys where they show the differences in wealth in America between the average workers and CEOs, tax brackets, etc... Really interesting bit after a great movie.

I think they pulled it off Instant Queue before I had a chance to watch it. Very sad.

Such a great movie. I love when Will Farrell gets into character acting like this and has a good partner to play off of with the jokes (Mark W. really does comedy with a buddy well too so the two of them are great). And the opening bit with the Rock and Sammy J? Hilarious for taking that extreme action hero angle into the real world and its consequences (nothing too like morose or anything, just fun with elementary physics and such. :D).

But for those that haven't seen it, the big case for these two nobodies is white-collar crime which ties in nicely to a discussion of corporate greed and culture at the end where it compares salaries of CEOs to their average workers over the years, tax brackets over the years, etc... Basically showing that really for the last 5 or 6 decades, those people at that level of employment and prosperity are just doing better and better economically. I wish I had all the statistics, but Tangle's comic does a nice illustration of some of it at least.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
PSN: DemosthenesHPW

My constant arguments about civil liberties aren't just important from an individual standpoint (preventing crimes against single people), but also from a societal one.... the looser the grip, the easier it is to hold together a divergent population as a unified whole.

America is supposed to have room for the Amish, and the gays, and this lady, and Gloria Steinem, all at once. Working out the contradictions in that is the hard part. In general, erring on the side of tolerance and freedom seems the best idea.

I love this summation. As often as I disagree with you, on this fundamental point we are completely in agreement, which actually supports this statement even more.

"We are at our best when we work together. We are at our worst when we expend valuable and finite energy and resources destroying one another." - Paleocon, regarding humanity.

It seems like everyone, conservative and liberal alike, wants to use the government to force people to all live the same way, to impose universal behavior standards, and most of the time, that's just not a very good idea.

Not everyone. Some of us, like me, hate this idea along with you. That's always a good thing to keep in mind.

There's no materials safety sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word "NO", scrawled over and over again in charred blood. - Randall Munroe

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of four military servicewomen that challenges the ban on women in direct combat.

The suit filed in San Francisco on Tuesday alleges the ban violates the right to equal protection. The “categorical exclusion of the individual plaintiffs and all women from ground combat positions, regardless of their abilities, is not and cannot be justified by generalized concerns about ‘military effectiveness,’ " the suit (PDF) alleges."

Now then this is important. Because even women deployed, who serve in theaters of war may be denied certain benefits and privileges for certain classes of veterans and combat veterans. Additionally, many state and federal civil service hiring policies give heavy preference to combat veterans, which is a class with nearly 0 women.

As a pragmatic matter then, do we now open up for new debate either abolishing the selective service or do we now force women to sign up?

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of four military servicewomen that challenges the ban on women in direct combat.

The suit filed in San Francisco on Tuesday alleges the ban violates the right to equal protection. The “categorical exclusion of the individual plaintiffs and all women from ground combat positions, regardless of their abilities, is not and cannot be justified by generalized concerns about ‘military effectiveness,’ " the suit (PDF) alleges."

Now then this is important. Because even women deployed, who serve in theaters of war may be denied certain benefits and privileges for certain classes of veterans and combat veterans. Additionally, many state and federal civil service hiring policies give heavy preference to combat veterans, which is a class with nearly 0 women.

While I hate the idea of anyone being in harm's way in military combat, am certainly ok with there not being a gender gap there. Can't wait to hear how this turns out.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
PSN: DemosthenesHPW

The only concerns that I have heard that seem legit are the physical requirements of combat troops. Soldiers carry a lot of weight (like 100-150 lbs) and are expected to be strong enough to carry that as well as more as required (i.e. other, injured troops). If they keep the physical standards the same, I say let anyone who meets them, and wants to, serve on the combat line.

A Cigar, much like Scotch and Monogamy, is an acquired taste.

McChuck wrote:

I'd recommend the Scottish martial art known as f*ck You. It's mostly just head butting and then kicking people when they're on the ground.